APPS & SITES

22 Million Views on SmugMug this year!

As many of you know, I moved over my portfolio to SmugMug this year. Have you seen my SmugMug Review? The team there gave readers here the a 20% savings (!!) — use the SmugMug Coupon of “STUCKINCUSTOMS“.

So, I was recently checking stats and I was surprised at how many views we have gotten on SmugMug in such a short time. 22 million in just over half a year, compared to Flickr, which is at 21 million after 5 years! I have posted shots from SmugMug and Flickr below.

Now, most of those views are just because of the blog, but it does show how heavily I rely on SmugMug. There is one “hidden” feature that you may not know about…. and this is a little geeky, but it helps! I have big photos here on the website… you all know this. They are 900 pixels across. Well, Flickr does serve them up in many sizes, and 1024 across is on of the standards. With Flickr, I need to use the width=”900″ in the html, which forces the browser to make a costly size change.

SmugMug, instead, does the processing on their beastly servers.

For example, I can take the default Xtra Large size link from SmugMug: http://stuckincustoms.smugmug.com/photos/974189667_iqznc-X2.jpg

and change the end so that the server resizes to 900 pixels across: http://stuckincustoms.smugmug.com/photos/974189667_iqznc-900x900.jpg

This means that everything is served up super-fast. This is a minor and nerdy point… but it does make the blog a lot faster.

SmugMug has a pretty cool stat tracking system, even though they don't use commas.

I also like the Flickr Stats system, even though I'm 95% sure it is broken.

Still on Flickr

As you can see, I still post all my photos to Flickr as well. I still like Flickr a lot, but it is not where I keep my main portfolio. I find the viewing experience better on SmugMug. Now, SmugMug has less of a community, so that is kind of a minor knock against it… but it’s easy enough to put the photos in both places.

Daily Photo – A Gentle Kiss in the Hot Tub

These snow monkeys are the greatest. I spent so long with them, we almost had a three-way.

They are all wild (in the natural sense, mind you), and they come down from the mountains near Nagano, Japan, for several hours a day to play in the natural hot springs. They gallivant around, have fights, play with their kids, have a bit of sweet carnal monkey fun, check their email, and pose for my camera.

These two monkeys spent a lot of time together… they were in maximum “relaxation mode”. They lounged around in every possible position and took occasional breaks to do a bit of mutual grooming.

Video Recap – Heartbeats of Japan

We have many new people here on the blog that might not have seen this. There’s a lot more snow-monkey stuff in here for you… enjoy!

I’m right there with ya. I jumped to SmugMug after you posted your blog about it and I can’t imagine using anything else right now. I get the same amout of views right now as I do with flickr. It’s odd but it’s very pretty. http://www.fivezerothree.com I love it and thank you Trey for all that you do for us followers!

I’m on zenfolio and considering making the move eventually. I don’t get any community type hits from Zenfolio, which seems strange. It’s fine in all other ways, though. Since you suggest sharing our sites here, I will put out my HDR portfolio- I would love to get some feedback. (famous last words)! http://www.kelleybard.com/hdr.

I am agree with you, with Smugmug. I have been user from 3 sites: PBase, Flickr and Smugmug, and I am agree that Smugmug offers better experience to see a porfolio, with the different configurations that have. Smugmug was the one and only site that offered a printed service several years ago (but I think that only in USA) and the possibility to sell your work directly. And also, it has great tools and tutorials to transform and customize your page and convert it in a website for a photographer including menus,slideshows, blogs, etc.

The inconvenience is the price. It was around 120 $ years ago vs. around 30 $ for a Flickr account. So if you want to share your work and not the extras, it’s better to use Flickr. Besides, Flickr has a bigger community.

Congratulations Trey for the visits.

Regards,

Sergio

BeachsidePaul

Love the Snow Monkeys! Being the gentleman that I am, I’ll refrain from commenting on the international legal and trade ramifications of your your rather kinky ‘almost’ 3-way 🙂

One of the reasons Smugmug has attracted so many photographers is how easy it is to customize the look and feel of your site, Trey’s gallery being the best example I have seen. I added a custom slide show and header to mine and love the ability to mark some collections and public and keep the others private. http://keithm.smugmug.com
Smugmug is also sponsoring regional user groups. In face, I first saw Trey present at the Austin Smugmug meeting.

Well done Trey, thats a great milestone!! Shows up my measly 36,000 views since mid Feb – I will catch you up one day haha!

Gail in Montana

Oh my gosh, Trey, I loved that video!!!!! 🙂 !! The snow monkeys remind me of wisened old men and women in their looks. They are just adorable. I love them and wish I could see them in person. Maybe we’ll make it to a zoo someday that has some. There are so many things I love in this video, I can’t list them all, lol. Isn’t it amazing how all the folks in the big cities in this world seem to have so much in common! Life isn’t all that different in Japan than here in the states. Not so in the rural areas though. I give your video and photo of the Snow Monkeys and A++++++++++++ ! Thanks so much for taking me places I won’t ever see in person. Great job. Have a great day, all. Now I have to go and check out smugmug 😉

John F

Thanks for the tip on how to display photo sizes. I was just recently trying to figure that out in SmugMug.

Absolutely mind-blowing video. I loved it. It has a soul, a feeling, the beauty of the japanese culture, and above all it makes me wanna go there to know more about heir culture, way of life, and also to shoot all my CF cards! 😉

Nice work, Trey, be safe!

Richard (Oldhickory)

Thanks for the pixel size info. That stuff is interesting. Pretty cool how you can customize the smugmug display size.

Wow, that is immense! I was just thinking about your snow monkey friends on Flickr just after I added one of my own primate-related photos. If you want something to keep you amused then I recommend the link to my photo below – it still cracks me up…..

Great shot! I’ve been trying to do HDR with animals and am not getting realistic results. Do you mask in a lot of the original photos for HDR animal shots? Fur seems to come out well but skin not so much. Feathers & beaks on birds also seem to come out strange. Anyways. Love the shot. I also really like Smug Mug.http://SignatureImagery.smugmug.com

Thanks for posting the Japan video here, Trey, I had not yet come across it. It’s very touching, reminds me of some of my colleagues who were Japanese ex-patriots who had to integrate themselves in to living in the U.S. for two or three years at a time, but were gracious enough to share their culture and friendship with me. Now I’ll go find where you describe how you shot it.

Giacomo

Fantastic video!

Yeah

You should really use tripod when shooting video. That camera shaking is very annoying. Slow motion shots took inside are flickering badly. I think that’s because frequenzy of lights is different than freq. of you camera. Your HDR pictures are great. I like.

Hi there , I found HDR photography early this year accidentally and i am impressed with the technique and its potential. still experimenting though and learning. I love this video . i liked most the way you compare side by side the similarities humanity has with monkey-nity. so different but so the same. LOVE the website . Keep up

A fantastic shot of the Monkeys Trey, just love it! Some amazing stats!!

I like the Mug as well, some wonderful features but as a hobbyist that likes to tinker with everything I maintain my own sites on a budget and supporting any whim – running at $3 per month with great storage and performance -;)

Just found your site, unfortunately too late to organise things so that I can be on your London photo walk tonight but maybe next time. Have a good evening out tonight and I’ll look forward to seeing the results.

Regards, Rob.

Robert Tillyard

Found the music. You had put it at the end of the video. Thank you. Hope you get on okay in London tonight.